F. Wilson - The Tery

Continuing the descent, Rab grabbed a torch out of its holder on the wall and led the way to the kitchen. The scullions had not yet arrived. Rab found the wood pile for the stove in a corner. He shoved the torch into it.

"What are you doing?"

"Giving Kitru's men something to worry about besides us."

That struck the tery as a brilliant idea, but he feared large fires. Everyone who lived in the forest did.

As the wood started to catch, Rab went to a window and looked outside. The tery followed.

The stars were fading and the sky was lightening beyond the wall. Predawn.

"Good timing for us," Rab said. "It's that hour of the day when consciousness has ebbed to its nadir, when the man awake finds it most difficult to remain so, and when the man asleep is most inert."

The smoke from the fire had filled the ceiling space and was now moving down upon them. The tery's eyes began to burn.

Rab coughed. "Let's go."

Rab and the tery became two wraiths skimming across the courtyard to stand and wait in the shadow under the walkway on the outer wall, each with his own precious burden.

They did not have to wait too long — it only seemed that way. The tery kept looking at the brightening sky, knowing that soon the shadows would fade, exposing them. The initial whisps of smoke from the kitchen went unnoticed. Not until the flames caught the door and licked upward did a groggy sentry sound the alarm.

All available hands rushed to quench the conflagration. As a bucket brigade formed from the well to the kitchen, Rab and the tery crept up the steps to the parapet. Rab threw his books over the side, then reached for Adriel.

The tery held her, unwilling to let her go.

"I'll hold her while you go over," Rab said. "Hurry!"

Reluctantly the tery gave her over, then scurried down the outer wall. Reaching the ground, he lifted his arms, feeling his heart beating in his throat. If he missed her…

Rab dropped Adriel over the edge and the tery caught her. He put her down briefly to catch Rab, then he had her in his arms again.

"Now run," Rab whispered. "Somebody's sure to spot us before we reach the trees, so run like you've never run before!"

The tery found the going difficult. He was built to travel on all fours, yet with Adriel in his arms he had to run in an upright position. Her weight threw his balance off, but he still managed to outstrip Rab in their race for safety.

They were half way to the trees when a call went up from one of the few sentries remaining on the wall. Before many arrows could be loosed, however, they were out of accurate range for even the best of the keep's archers. The trees closed in on them and they were safe.

After putting a little more distance between themselves and the keep, Rab called for a halt and dropped his bundle of books to the sward.

"I don't think there'll be much pursuit, if any," he panted, leaning against a tree trunk. "Once they find Kitru dead, there'll be nothing but chaos in the keep."

The tery stood with Adriel still in his arms, barely listening, his mind racing. Rab's voice trailed off. The tery felt his gaze settle on him, flicking over Adriel and the way he held her.

"Why don't you put her down and we'll see if we can bring her around."

Lost in the sensation of Adriel's inert form against his chest as he clutched her tightly, possessively, it took the tery a while before he could answer. Her warmth, her softness, her scent…all awakening a timeless ache deep within him. He had never been so close to her. Holding her like this…

He had come to a decision.

"That won't be necessary," he told Rab in a dry voice.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"We're not going to rejoin the psi-folk. We'll find a life of our own in the forest. I'll protect her, provide for her, and no one will ever harm or threaten her again."

Rab's expression was sad. "I don't think that would be wise," he said softly.

The tery spoke in a rush, as much in an effort to convince himself as Rab.

"I'm human, am I not? You told me so yourself."

"Yes, but that doesn't mean —"

"Right now I feel very human. She's human, too. And she's lonely and unhappy living with the psi-folk. I could make her happy. She loves me — she's told me so, many times."

"She loves you as a beast. As a pet." Rab straightened and approached the tery. "But will she love you as a man?"

"She will learn."

"You don't know that. It's a choice that only she can make. And if you take her away and try to make it for her, then you're no better than Kitru and the captain who killed your parents." His voice softened. "And there are some hard facts you must accept: If by some wild chance she did accept you as a man and a husband, the offspring of your bonding would carry your shape — or much of it."

The idea startled the tery. He hadn't thought of children. He envisioned horrid mixtures of Adriel and himself that left him speechless.

"Your ancestors were deformed at the whim of some diseased mind. This atrocity has been perpetuated for generations. It might be best for you to decide to bring the Teratols' colossal joke to an end — let it go no further than you."

Anger and bitterness thickened the tery's voice as he spoke.

"I would find that easy to say if, like you, the only mark I carried was the ability to speak with my mind — a 'gift' rather than a deformity. It is easy to speak of letting the curse go no further if someone else must make the sacrifice."

A grim smile played about Rab's mouth. "Why do you think I've spent most of my life looking for a link between teries and humans? I told you I knew there was a link — how do you think I knew?"

"You?"

Rab nodded. "I was born with a tail, as were my mother and brother and sister, and their mother before them." He shook his head sadly. "What amusement my ancestors must have caused some depraved Teratol. Normal in every way except for a scaly rat's tail."

The tery sensed the pain and humiliation in Rab's voice. It echoed his own.

"So, you're a tery, too."

"Yes. But for generations my family has seen to it that the tail is cut off flush with the body immediately at birth — there's virtually no scar left if done that early in life. And so they have passed for all those generations as humans, yet all the while thinking of themselves as teries, lower life forms somehow altered by the Great Sickness so that they looked and acted like humans. I'm sure some of my forebears suspected that they might be human, but none was ever so sure as I. For I had another birthright besides a tail — I had the Talent. Neither my mother nor my father was so gifted — perhaps each carried an incomplete piece of the Talent within, and those pieces fused into a whole when I came to be. I don't know. There's so much I don't know. But I did know I was a tery with the Talent, and only humans had been known to possess the Talent. So I decided to prove I was human."

"What has this to do with me?"

"I also decided that the Teratols have laughed long enough. I shall father no children."

The tery stood unmoving, eyeing Rab intently. He had known the man only a short while but had come to trust him. He sensed he was telling the truth. Yet he could not bring himself to put Adriel down. He felt he would explode if he did not have her. He had to take her away with him.

"You cannot stop me, Rab."

"That's true. You've killed two men tonight, nearly killed a third. You could kill me easily. But you won't. Because I sense something in you, something better than that. I sense in you most of the good things that are human. And you won't force yourself upon the girl who befriended you."

The tery swayed. The forest seemed to reel and spin around him. He so wanted to be an equal in Adriel's eyes, but he never could be if they stayed with the Talents. What should he do? What was the right thing to do?